Monday, February 20, 2017

Interview with women's history writer Suzanne Sherman

Suzanne Sherman is a
professional editor, memoir teacher, book consultant, and writing coach. She has
ghostwritten memoirs and business books and her book proposals have gained
representation by top agents and small publishers. Her
newest book is Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 - 2010, available in print on Amazon, local bookstores, by
order through Ingram, and as an e-book.

Please tell us
about your current release.

Girlhood in America is a fun and fascinating look at the life and times
before age 13 in every decade across a century in the words of 56 women and
girls. A short cultural history of each decade and highlights from pop culture
open the chapters, about inventions and advancements across the 20th century.
It's a time capsule, an educational and entertaining living history that shows
what's unique and what's universal across a century of change.

What inspired you
to write this book?

I started teaching memoir
in 1996, when my students were mostly women and men born in the early years of
the 20th century. Fifteen years and hundreds of amazing true stories later, I
realized the times that led us to where we are today were disappearing with the
people who had lived them. I wanted to be a storycatcher and share some of the
stories with more people. Florence’s dad bought a car from a door-to-door car
salesman when she was 5 in 1911—that story is the 1910s chapter. Lois went to
one of the first “talkies” in the 1920s. In the 1960s, Victoria went to
Woodstock, at 12. And then there are the stories I collected from girls who
came up in the ‘70s, ’80s, ‘90s, and 2000s. I saw the girls go from mother’s
helper at home to contributors to culture.

Excerpt from Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 – 2010:

from CHAPTER 8: The 1980s

Ms. Pac-Man Is IT! Nicole Bivens — Little Rock, Arkansas

.... Nicole wore Levi’s
button-up jeans and T-shirts to school because, she says, dresses just weren’t
practical. Dresses were for church or weddings or Easter. And the superhero
underwear? That was good any day of the week.

My underwear was decorated
with characters like Tinkerbell or Care Bears and superheroes like Wonder Woman
Everyone had them. My favorite shoes were KangaROOS, with the little zippered
pocket on the side where you keep coins. We thought we could run faster in
those shoes because that’s what they said on the commercial.

For years, my hair was
long, down to my butt. That changed with Dorothy Hamill. I wanted more than
anything to be a figure skater like her, but there wasn’t a chance. The best I
could do was get the Hamill haircut. I never had long hair again.

Halloween was Nicole’s
favorite holiday, until safety became a new concern for trick-or- treaters. It
wasn’t all about putting on a costume and going out at night with friends to
collect a shopping bag full of chocolates anymore.

We’d get a costume at
K-Mart — Wonder Woman was one of my favorites — and our mom or a relative would
go with us while we went door to door trick-or-treating. We’d come home with
huge bags of candies, all kinds, and we’d sort through them for what we liked
best and trade some with each other. Then we started hearing about razor blades
showing up in Halloween candies and people talked about poisoning. It was all
over the news: check your candy. We still went out, but as soon as we
got home the adults checked every piece of our candy to make sure everything
looked okay. The fun game — free candy — suddenly became something you had to
fear.

That was just before
seventh grade, when Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign against drugs was on
full force. They showed movies at school where people high on angel dust
thought they were Superman and wanted to dive out second-story windows, and
alcoholics were shown in all kinds of extreme situations. In class, we made a
commitment not to take drugs and signed a “Just Say No” card we were asked to
carry around in our pocket or purse. I know I took it seriously even though I
have no idea what happened to that card.

What exciting
story are you working on next?

I’m collecting stories now
for the next book in the 100 Years in the Life series: Teenage Girls! Coming of Age Through a Century. These are stories
about experiences that affected you as a teenage girl (13 to 20 years old) and
that reflect the era or decade when you were that age. Topics can be any
experience that gave you a new sense of independence or in some way made an
important impression on you. At the website you’ll
find a form to submit your idea for contributing a story for the book. As with
Girlhood in America, I’ll be including a fun and interesting write-up of
culture for girls in every decade, from 1920 to 2020. This book, though, will
have much to say about first loves, dating, learning to drive, and all the rest
that comes crossing that bridge between childhood and being a woman.

When did you first
consider yourself a writer?

That first diary I had
when I was 10 could be called my first book, but I found the few lines to fill
out for each day limiting. I had a lot more to say than what happened with the
summary at the end: “It was fun” or “It wasn’t fun.” Two years later I was
filling pages in three-ring notebooks detailing the day’s events (including
conversations with boys) and calling those books my diary. By high school my
favorite classes were poetry and creative writing. In college, I majored in creative
writing, writing short stories and a short novel. I knew writing was the only
world I wanted to live in.

Do you write full-time?
If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and
how do you find time to write?

I write for much of the
day every day. Besides my own writing, I am an editor, ghostwriter, and memoir
teacher, helping other people write and get published. I am busy with words all
day. Fortunately, I like to wake up early and use that quiet time for writing
the short memoirs I publish occasionally in The Sun magazine, write my
memoir blog articles, and work on my books.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I do my best work sitting
with a laptop in my recliner with my feet up. Sitting at a desk or using a
desktop computer is creatively confining for me.

As a child, what
did you want to be when you grew up?

A novelist. I didn’t know
yet about memoir and how good it could be.

Anything
additional you want to share with the readers?

In the 1960s, when I was a
young girl, there were a lot of new foods and toys, some of them two-for-ones,
like the Thingmaker, with its Gobbedy-Goop to make the little creatures in the
supplied molds on the electric stove; I mention that in my story in the book.
We get so busy with our lives we tend to forget about or discount our younger
years, but writing this book I got to remember and laugh about some of the
stuff that gave me so much pleasure. I’ve heard the same from women whose girlhoods
were in the 1970s and on. Not all times were happy ones, and I appreciated
hearing about the challenges that showed up in every decade for girls from all
walks of life. I wish everyone a great experience time-traveling!

I'm listed!

Blog Tour Partner - Goddess Fish

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About Me

I'm a NH native and love New England. I love writing about the region, exploring it on foot, on my bicycle, and in my car. There are so many small communities and fun and interesting people in this area, that I could be here a lifetime and not do all it is I want to do. :)

I'm a moderator at The Writer's Chatroom that hosts live chats with guest authors on Sunday nights 7-9PM EST. Join the e-mail list to get notifications of upcoming guests, then stop in and join the conversation!